My Losing Drink Entry: Brazil ’66 (with apologies to the great Sergio Mendez and the venerable French 75)

See more Recipes

We’ll never know if I came in fourth or dead last in the Tales of the Cocktail Drink Competition yesterday, but we can gaze longingly at the winner’s circle regardless.

Congratulations to those who won, and I hope the rest of you losers will post your own recipes in the comments. Here’s mine, the Brazil ’66 (with apologies to the great Sergio Mendez and the venerable French 75)

Brazil 66 Print Me

  • 1 large or 2 medium strawberries, hulled
  • .75 oz cachaça
  • .75 oz orange liqueur (Cointreau or Citronge)
  • .5 oz grenadine (preferably high-quality)
  • 3 oz champagne
  1. Muddle strawberries and grenadine in bottom of a mixing glass until berries form a smooth paste. Add remaining ingredients and fill with ice. Stir ingredients until cold and strain into a chilled champagne flute. Garnish with a strawberry slice and mint sprig.

Recipe printed courtesy of jeffreymorgenthaler.com

15 Replies to “My Losing Drink Entry: Brazil ’66 (with apologies to the great Sergio Mendez and the venerable French 75)”

  • Man, those all look great. I’m going to have to try some of them out, next time I want a champagne cocktail.

  • Jimmy says:

    I can understand not being able to count to seven after a hard days graft tasting cocktails.

  • Sean Bigley says:

    Jimmy,
    That sounds like a wonderful cocktail too! Can’t wait to see how you make the cassis foam.

    Perhaps the four of us should have been judges rather than competitors. At least I’m sure we can count to 7 and wouldn’t just stop counting ingredients when we get to 5.

    Cheers All!
    Sean

  • Jeffrey says:

    I contacted Jamie, and he sent his recipe along. it sounds fantastic!

    Colt’s Neck Swizzle
    2 oz Laird’s Applejack
    ¾ oz Ginger syrup
    ½ oz Lemon juice
    2 dashes Fee’s peach bitters
    3 oz Moet & Chandon Champagne

    Place all but 1 ½ oz Champagne in Collins glass.
    Fill ¾ with crushed ice and swizzle (stir) for 7 – 10 seconds.

    Fill glass with crushed ice and top up with the remaining Champagne creating a nice fizzy “head”.

  • Jeffrey says:

    We’ll never know, Jimmy. You and Sean Bigley are the only two people that read my site!

  • jimmy says:

    Yeah, probably. It is easy enough to make, and the texture is really nice. This is one advantage the local bartenders had, they could go in and prepare their own cocktail for the judges.

    I wonder what Jamie B. sent in?? I bet he had some killer molecular juju going on.

  • Jeffrey says:

    Jimmy

    If they did indeed disqualify you, I’ll bet you it’s for that foam. They had some stipulations about using easy-to find and easy-to-prepare ingredients.

    However, I do like the cassis foam on top of champagne idea. Very inspired!

  • jimmy says:

    Sean,

    That recipe sounds really nice! Good luck at the Nevada comp.

    Jeffrey,

    Here’s my loser from the Tales of the Cocktail competition

    French Quarter
    Champagne Flute

    2.5 oz Moet White Star
    1 oz. Plymouth Gin
    2 dashes Fee’s Old Fashioned Aromatic Bitters
    2dashes Simple Syrup

    Build in champagne flute, garnish with a thin layer of cassis foam.

    Pictures and my Casis Foam recipe to be posted at the Cocktail Hour soon.

  • Jeffrey says:

    The Barmaid is here! If you haven’t read her tales of Manhattan drink culture, you’re missing out.

    And I’m going to make some ginger simple tonight so that I can try Sean’s drink this weekend. Maybe I’ll run it as a special – but that means I’ll have to pick up some pear vodka… we’ll see.

  • Oh, my God, that sounds delicious…! I’m going to make myself one of those during my shift tonight, and I might just try to convince some other folks to order it, too. No sense an entire bottle of champagne going to waste on my one drink. 🙂

    Debra
    The Barmaid Blog

  • Jeffrey says:

    Wow, Sean, that sounds like an amazing recipe! I expected as much, but wow! Great concept, I think that pear is a natural pairing (no pun intended) with the White Star. Lots of apple and pear flavors there.

    Jimmy Patrick is going to make us wait until he posts his recipe here, but he already has a writeup about the competition on his own site.

    Keep us informed about Sunday, I think we’d all like to hear how you do. And good luck!

    Any other losing recipes, folks?

  • Sean Bigley says:

    Sounds like a great cocktail to me, Jeff. And here is my losing recipe:

    Bayou Pearl

    3/4 0z. Absolut Pears
    1 oz. Ceres Pear Juice
    1/4 oz. White Ginger Syrup (Sonoma)
    3 oz. Moet White Star Champagne

    Stir all ingredients gently in a mixing glass with ice and strain into a chilled Champagne flute. Garnish with a long, thinly sliced sliver of fresh pear and insert into the glass.

    Hopefully things will go better this Sunday. The USBG Nevada Chapter annual competition will be taking place. This will probably be my final USBG competition for reasons that I will disclose at a later date. Wish me luck. Like I said before, you definately gotta have some luck.

    Cheers to all!
    Sean

  • Jeffrey says:

    I think they only posted the winning entries, Camper.

  • Why isn’t your recipe listed on the recipes page on the TOTC site?

    http://www.talesofthecocktail.com/2007/recipes.php

  • jimmy says:

    Sounds good to me. I’ll post my recipe here once I finish writing it up.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *